Fundamentally, we live in an age with a widely publiahed book called the god delusion. Religion is loosing it's pedastal. People can handle an adaption of mythology. (What's offensive about telling a story, anyway?)
It's part of the new PC culture. Everyone is expected to be sensitive an all that yada yada. It doesn't matter if a small group of people getting offended. It's your art and your opinions and if they don't like it, well too bad. The social justice warrior culture, and PC culture can go suck it.
Yeah those PC warriors are such arseholes, expecting people to actually care about others. How ridiculous!
Look, if you want to cater to everyone else that's your deal, but everyone else shouldn't be forced to censor their writing because of a small minority of people who might be offended.
How are you judging a "small minority?" There are over a billion Hindus in the world. Anyway, who's talking about forcing? I choose not to be an arsehole, because I don't want to be an arsehole. I just think it's sad that anyone would choose to be an arsehole.
It is censorship. See in the United States we believe that even controversial and unpopular speech is protected. That is sacrosanct. It is censorship when you force it on other people. Using mythology from other cultures is not disrespectful.
I'm not saying you should, but I'm glad someone did. If we are only talking about what we would or wouldn't do as individual authors, that's one thing, but "cultural appropriation" isn't a term that is used by individuals to talk about what they write personally, it's a term used to tell authors what it is appropriate to write. That's why, in the context of cultural appropriation, people become critical when other people write something they don't like.
That's the game of Political Correctness is forcing people to not do things they don't like. Plus I fail to see how using a few elements of mythology is offensive.
And the civil war wasn't about slavery, it was about states rights... On another note, hows that dragon adaptation coming along?
Well yeah, I'm critical of the way some authors use other cultures in their "art", especially when their attitude is that they should be able to do whatever they want without being called out on it. That's very different from saying I don't think authors should be able to write about other cultures. No, it isn't.
It is. Especially when you're allowed to use certain groups, but others others can't be touched. Like it's okay to criticise Christians, but if you criticise Muslims or the refugees you're just awful and racist and blah blah blah.
Golly, and as a lifelong citizen of the United States, I had no idea. And AGAIN, this isn't about forcing someone to keep unpopular opinions quiet, it's about, as a writer, making the conscious choice to respect someone's beliefs, their culture, their feelings. It's about you, yourself, choosing to act as a decent human being.
Mostly, it's about ownership and control. Not legal ownership, but intellectual ownership of ideas, which is a bad approach, in my view. Yes, any work may offend people. Sometimes literature offends. Sometimes paintings, plays, music, photography, and film offend. I know people who are offended to the point of true emotional distress by homosexuals in books and film. OK, but that isn't going to stop me including such characters. "Cultural appropriation," to the extent people use it as anything other than "my own preferences about what I write," which isn't how it is typically used, is about recognizing intellectual ownership of ideas among one specific group of people and controlling use of those ideas by others. And it ends up being one of those "I know it when I see it things," because no one can form bright line rules around it. There are certain American cultural aspects that Japanese writers like to employ, and do so in a very "Americanized" or western way. Problem? Suppose an English novel is writing historical fiction that includes Scots? The British have been right bastards to the Scots over the years, so is that a problem? Suppose the Scots the the bad guys - now is it a problem? Robert Bolaño, who was brilliant, was Chilean. But he set a lot of his work in Mexico City (where he lived) and drew on Mexican political and social culture. Was he wrong to do it? To get into more commercial, popular literature, Rick Riordan is American, but draws on mythology from all over the world. I don't imagine that every mythological or supernatural inspiration Rowling drew on was historically and culturally English. James Rollins draws on history and myth from all over the world, and he's American. Etc. Etc. At any rate, if you can't tell I'm not a fan. I think this sort of thing becomes entirely subjective, and that you'll never please people who are looking for a reason to be critical of something like this. In the end, you write what you want and don't let other people tell you that you can't do it.
"Trigglypuff" n'uff said. It's unpopular because it offends someone, but this is the real world, if you can't handle criticism without getting offended then hey, thats too bad.
Yes, it is. However, if you dig into conversations on cultural appropriation, what people are saying, generally, is that you should not be doing it. Not what you're saying, but that's the general direction of the larger discussion (I see this topic discussed a lot in social media, and in literature written on the topic).
Again, with the JK Rowling / First Nations thing (for example), people were saying she shouldn't have done it because it wasn't respectful towards First Nations people. Not that her book should be pulled or censored. It was that, as a decent person, JK should have made the choice not to do it. I'm the same - I think people shouldn't write disrespectfully about live cultures because we should be decent human beings. I don't believe they should be banned or somehow prevented from doing it. I don't want to make people already outside of the 'mainstream' feel even more alienated, excluded, ridiculed or fetishised. I can't understand why anyone would want to do that once they understood that would be the effect of their work.
Cultural appropriation is the use of a cultural item/idea/etc without understanding what it is. Example: actresses who wear a bindi because it looks pretty and draws attention to their eyes.
It's interesting how the thread was explicitly about personal preference until other people decided it was censorship, eh? Apparently when you have a conversation about what you prefer to write or not write, someone else will pop in telling you you should write it, and it turns into a conversation where you have to justify and defend your preference. Seriously. Maybe we could keep the thread on its rails.
